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California Fleet News

California Fleet News is a fleet management newsletter that has been published for over 35 years and has over 6,000 national and international readers. The newsletter is published six times annually in an electronic edition.

California Fleet News and Spectrum Consulting provide the following services that can be found on this site:

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today issued the 2017 optional standard mileage rates used to calculate the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business, charitable, medical or moving purposes.

Beginning on Jan. 1, 2017, the standard mileage rates for the use of a car (also vans, pickups or panel trucks) will be:
•53.5 cents per mile for business miles driven, down from 54 cents for 2016
•17 cents per mile driven for medical or moving purposes, down from 19 cents for 2016
•14 cents per mile driven in service of charitable organizations

The business mileage rate decreased half a cent per mile and the medical and moving expense rates each dropped 2 cents per mile from 2016. The
charitable rate is...

Upcoming - Fleet Seminar sponsored by PFMA
and to be conducted in Oregon and Washington - June 2018

Question: What do "Top 100 Fleets" and "Fleet Managers of the Year " have in
common?"

Answer: They and their fleet employees participated in the California Fleet News
seminar, "Competitive Fleet Management: Run the Fleet as a Business."

Top fleet managers tout this seminar as a key factor in their fleet management
success. In fact, many fleet managers have sent their entire staff to the session
over the past 14 years Over 5,000 fleet personnel trained and 1,000 in the...

Transportation
The battle between Uber, Lyft and taxis has moved to airports
San Diego Airport Approves Pilot Program
Uber protests in Paris violent

HEADLINE FLEET NEWS
Oregon launches program to tax drivers per mile
Self-driving cars nearly collide in California raising questions about the technology
New bill would allow New Jersey drivers to pump their own gas
Drunk driver-proof cars...

One of the most basic yet important aspects of a competitive fleet management program is policy and organization. But whatever the reason—whether politics or lack of knowledge -- many fleets are neither organized properly nor provided the authority to be competitive.

Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence, answers, in response to the question: What share of business problems come from structure, human resource practices and from top management decision making? Structure (organization), 50%; systems, 35%; people, 15%; top management, 0. He adds: “I contend that top managers...

Comparing notes with other fleet managers about the cost of fleet operations is often a futile exercise because of different methods of identifying, structuring and calculating fleet costs.

Identify all costs

Identifying costs is the key to management of any service yet most fleets do not identify the full cost of fleet services. For example, while direct costs are included in fleet program budgets, they reflect only the tip of the iceberg as important indirect cost allocations are consistently left out of the equation. In these situations, the true cost of fleet management is actually much higher than recognized and decision making regarding the fleet function is conducted in an erroneous factual environment.

CFN is taking orders for its landmark publication, Best Fleet Management Practices and Performance Measures. This is the only comprehensive listing of best fleet management practices in the industry. The manual includes over 100 best practices and over 85 performance measures for managing fleet operations.

The manual includes three major chapters. The first chapter outlines the fundamental structure needed for fleet organization: policy, authority, financial policy, management and services organization, customer organization and information technology foundation.

The second chapter covers cost and chargeback management, assignment and fleet size management, cycling management and services management. The third chapter identifies the services provided by fleet management...